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JONES: Deja vu as MacTavish realizes his expiration date with Oilers again

Terry Jones

Published: May 16, 2019 - 8:24 PM

It was 2009 when Craig MacTavish essentially fired himself as head coach of the Edmonton Oilers, despite a text from owner Daryl Katz to team radio colorrman Bob Stauffer saying, hell no, he wasn’t going to be let go.

MacTavish knew it was time to go, and, despite his too-loyal owner, effectively gave general manager Tentative Steve Tambellini permission to do the dirty deed and announce that he’d been relieved of his duties.

MacTavish made it easy for the Oilers to do what had to be done. And now, it appears to have happened again.

On Thursday, Edmonton woke up to the news out of Russia that MacTavish had just signed a two-year deal to take over as head coach of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the KHL.

With a lot observers expecting new GM and president of hockey operations Ken Holland about to make several changes in the front office, it appears MacTavish just made it easy for them again.

We’ll likely have to wait a day to hear MacTavish’s explanation for the move as he was flying to Europe and unavailable for comment. But boy, it felt like déjà vu, minus the text from Katz.

It was a crazy set of circumstances at the time.

MacTavish, who came within one game of coaching the Oilers to the Stanley Cup in 2006, losing Game 7 of the final, was completing his third straight season out of the playoffs. There were three or four games remaining in the season when, after a practice at Millennium Place in Sherwood Park, MacTavish started talking about his future – or more accurately, the lack of it.

I tracked Stauffer down in Disneyland on Thursday to refresh me on how that went down from his end.

“Remember he started talking about having a shelf life and how long of a run a coach had, at what point did the coach get tired of the players and the players get tired of the coach?

“Well, the next night we were discussing that on the air and Daryl texted me during the game that MacT wasn’t going anywhere.”

MacTavish knew it was time. He’d reached his expiration date.

It was slapstick that he had to basically convince the Oilers owner of that, but that’s Daryl Katz.

“We both know MacT never got fired as a coach. He basically resigned as the coach,” said Stauffer.

When MacTavish fired himself as coach, he made an interesting detour on his career path.

While he kept himself immersed in the game with gig as a hockey commentator with TSN, he spent two years earning a masters degree in business from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

If you go back to heading to Queen’s University for two years after firing himself as coach in 2009, heading off to coach Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the KHL seems to me to be MacTavish being MacTavish.

Isn’t he repeating his own history in heading off for a new experience and a new challenge?

MacTavish has always put the organization first, dating back to when GM-coach Glen Sather brought him to Edmonton as a player after having been released from incarceration at the end of serving his sentence for vehicular homicide while with the Boston Bruins.

The last old-time hockey player in the NHL to play without a helmet, MacTavish competed in 701 regular season games with the Oilers and 133 additional games in the playoffs in his 17-year playing career. He won three Stanley Cups as a player in Edmonton and another with a collection of ex-Oilers teammates with the Rangers in New York. He was Edmonton’s head coach for a remarkable 656 games.

MacTavish, after winning his degree from Queen’s, accepted a job offer from his former agent, Mike Gillis, who had become GM of the Vancouver Canucks, to coach their AHL farm team, the Chicago Wolves. From there, of course, he returned to the Oilers as GM.

Again, he didn’t so much get fired as he got demoted and worked under Peter Chiarelli as vice-president of hockey os with a focus on the Bakersfield Condors.

I’ve always had a great deal of admiration for MacTavish even though I’m well aware that coming out of the Decade of Darkness, history isn’t going to treat him kindly.

I’ll always wonder how he would have gone down in history if goaltender Dwayne Roloson hadn’t been injured in Game 1 of the 2006 final and MacTavish would have become the only coach of a Canadian-based NHL team to win the Stanley Cup since 1993.

And I’ll always wonder where the Oilers would be going forward if, as GM, he hadn’t made the dumb-ass move to fire Ralph Krueger — by Skype, yet — to hire Dallas Eakins as head coach. Almost for certain, if he hadn’t done that, Connor McDavid wouldn’t be an Edmonton Oiler today.

MacTavish was player, captain, coach and GM of the Oilers before taking on his most recent roles. And, at age 60, here’s wishing him good luck as he tries to bring a Gagarin Cup to Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the KHL.

If whoever ends up with the most hockey experiences wins, then Craig MacTavish leaves Edmonton a winner.

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